The Wizard’s List: Summer’14 Features

Important links

You can get the official dates for launch at trust.salesforce.com/trust/maintenance.

I also recommend checking out the Success Community Group Success – Release Readiness

Finally, you can get access to the release notes, videos, and lots of other fun items here: www.salesforce.com/newfeatures/ Make sure you check out the “Release Preview” and “Release Training” links on the right hand of that page.

General

So here are some the general new features coming up in Summer ’14.

• Email Size increase to 25MB from 10MB. Individual attachments still can’t be larger than 10MB
• Notes & Attachments increased to 25MB from 5MB
• Pin Report & Dashboard folders
• Description field added to login IP ranges  “The Description field is my friend“
• More specific permissions breaking up “Manage Users”
• Limit Raised for External IDs from 3 to 7
• Salesforce Files
• New Rich Text Editor for HTML Home Components
• New Visualforce area home page component(
• Workflow Target User Merge Fields for Email templates: Email ManagerID of triggered user
• Approval history Reports  on Completed and in progress approvals.

Notable Things:

Rich Text Editor and the new Visualforce Area for Home Page Components. Currently you can put javascript and HTML in the current HTML Home Component. Starting with Summer’14 salesforce.com will begin phasing out the use of javascript and straight HTML in these components. Exisiting components will continue to work, but in Summer ’15 unsupported code from these components will be removed. Never fear! The new Visualforce Area for Home Page Components will allow you to add Javascript, CSS, and HTML. So your existing components can be moved over to the new Visualforce Component.

Salesforce Files has been rumored or in pilot it seem for ages. Summer’14 brings the store, sync, and share functionality out of pilot mode and will be generally available for everyone. This will be a desktop client you can install. There’s some limits. The Maximum data that can be sync in their File folder is 10 GB. The maximum file size is 500MB.

Flow

I’m sure you’ve seen my recent posts on Flows: Marrying Flows with Apex and Using Flows to Create Roll Up Summary. I’ve definitely willing to go with the Flow. I’m happy to see some of the features available in the Headless flow pilot roll out in Summer ’14. I’m very excited to be able to Send Email from a Flow via Email Alert. This will make sending error messages within a Flow much easier.

• Changes to Trigger Read Flows
• Flow Triggers can pass previous record values into Sobject variables
• Send Email from a flow

Salesforce1

Salesforce1 is the new mobile platform salesforce.com announced at Dreamforce 2014. The Summer’14 release adds features that were greatly missed when the platform rolled out last year. There are many new features. Here are some that I’m looking forward to having.

• Add contacts from Today app
• Drill down to report form dashboard
• Sort data in reports
• Publisher Actions available in Chatter Off Orgs for Salesforce1 (pg 172)
• Submit Records for Approval within Salesforce1 (pg 183)

Notable Things:

To make Salesforce1 really shine, you need to use Chatter Publisher Actions. Until Summer’14 this meant you had to have Chatter enabled in your org. Starting with this release, the publisher actions will be available for Salesforce1 regardless if you have Chatter on or not.

With Salesforce1 there are three methods of accessing the app: Android App, iOS app, and the mobile browser app. There are some features available in one version, but not others. Definitely check out the release notes for the Salesforce1 Enhancement table. It lists all the new features and which version of the app they’re available.

Sales

The feature summary list for Sales Cloud improvements was two pages. That’s just the list of new features! Here are the ones that I’m personally looking forward to

• Opportunity Splits now customizable
• Historical Trending for forecasts (Collaborative only)
• Price Books customizable
• Territory Management 2.0

Notable Things:

Opportunity Splits being customizable is fantastic. Personally, I would love ever object Salesforce has to be a fully customizable object. More flexibility! Which is why I’m also excited for Price Books will be customizable going forward too!

Territory Management 2.0 I’m eagerly awaiting to see how it progresses. I use Territory Management in my org and it’s one of the reasons why I keep a big bottle of Tums on my desk. Unfortunately, this initial release of TM 2.0 I won’t be able to use, but it’s a good first step into re-doing Territory Management. Now I just need a “run all territory assignment rules” button.

Service

Service Cloud features list was more than two pages! There’s lots of updates for Case Feed and the Console, but here or some I’m looking forward to.

• Knowledge AutoComplete for Article Key word and title searches
• Live Agent Transfer Files during Chat
• Live Agent transfer Chat via Chat button queue
• Live Agent Article tool replaced with Knowledge one Widget

 Developer

For Developers there release is full of goodies too. There’s updates to the Develop Console, Visualforce, Canvas, APEX and API. I’m still going through the details, but here are some that immediately caught my eye.

• Change Sets included in Deployment Status page
• Describe limits removed
• Create Price Book Entries in Apex Tests

Notable Things:

I only posted three items for this section. I may have a separate developer post up for the rest. I’m very excited the Change Sets are going to be included with the deployment status screen. I was confused when the screen got updated and I was missing the majority of my deployments (Change sets). I’m also excited that Describe limits are being removed. This is going to let developers really ramp up some of the dynamic cool things they can do with the platform without running out of describes.

The big news for me is that I will be able to create Price Book Entries in Apex Tests. This doesn’t sound like a big deal, but up until now unit tests had to use @SeeAlldata and query real data to be able to run tests using Price Book Entries. I will no longer be held at the whim if someone changes a Price Book Entry and suddenly have my code fail!

Wrap Up

I suggest you go read the release notes. It’s a semi-living document so check frequently and look at the “changes” section.

So go find that Hammock and start reading! Is there a feature you’re excited for that I didn’t cover? Let me know in the comments!

The only way to read release notes

A Note From The Editor

A little secret about WizardNews posts. I hate writing Post Titles. I struggle with trying to write titles that are informative, accurate, and grab your attention. One of the more difficult parts is not to interject my sense of humor into the title – too much. For example, alternative titles for today’s post included:

• Summer’14 the sites, the sounds, the features!
• Hammock Hangout for Release Readiness
• Snorkeling for Features in Summer’14
• Summertime and the livin’ is all Salesforce
• The Heat is On – Summer’14 is coming!

They progressively got worse, typically by destroying good song titles.

What other titles can you come up with for this week’s blog post?

Let me know in the comments!